Painted Faces (23 page)

“
You know you are,” I answer him with a sigh. “Maybe that's the problem.”

He bends down so that his lips graze my ear. “The admiration isn't one sided. I think you look completely fuckable in that pretty little dress.”

“
Are we back to this again?” I ask, feigning boredom, though on the inside I'm feeling quite triumphant that the dress has done its job. “I thought you'd gotten over your attraction to me. You've been very well behaved.”

“
I was trying to respect you, but I also don't want to hurt you. You're my friend, and I could see how I was upsetting you, so I stopped. That doesn't mean I don't think about your mouth every night, about how you felt against my hand, how you moaned when I made you come.”

“
Nicholas, shut the fuck up,” I whisper.

Before he can respond I hear Harry calling us over to the living area. I step away from Nicholas and go to sit down on the couch, while he follows and sits beside me. Nora is sitting on the
chaise longue
beside Colm. Yes, that
chaise longue
. I can't even glance at the thing without blushing.

“
Fred, you're looking well,” says Colm, shamelessly eyeing my cleavage. Harry's brother has light brown hair and is wearing a black shirt with grey trousers. I can smell his designer aftershave even though I'm more than four feet away from him.

“
Piss off,” I mutter under my breath while I sip on my wine. When I look at Nicholas I notice him trying to contain a smirk, since he heard what I said. Harry heard too. He gives me a look of warning. He has this weird hero worship thing going on with his older brother. Even though Colm is a complete and total wanker, Harry seems to think that the sun shines out of his arse.

“
Be nice,” Harry mouths at me soundlessly.

“
Fine,” I mouth back, before turning to Colm. “Thank you, you're looking quite dapper yourself.” He doesn't notice I'm using a sarcastic tone, which only further reinforces my negative opinion of him. He thinks so highly of himself that he doesn't even consider it a possibility that someone might be mocking him.

“
Do you think so?” Colm asks with a grin, before standing up and coming over to sit in between myself and Nicholas. He just barely manages to squeeze himself in, and I have to bite back my laughter at the bemused look on Nicholas' face.

Sean, Harry and Nora continue with whatever conversation they had been having, and a tall good looking guy comes to sit down beside Nora. He's a bartender from the club, but I don't know his name. Nora turns to shake his hand before giving him a flirty smile.

“
It feels like I haven't seen you in ages,” Colm says beside me. “When was the last time?”

“
Um, Harry's birthday I think,” I mutter, knocking back the wine. Perhaps alcohol will make him more bearable.

“
Oh I remember now, you were wearing this great pair of jeans,” he waggles his eyebrows at me suggestively. Oh good fuck. Here we go.

Nicholas turns to his side to fully take in the awkward exchange.

I need him to go away, so I say, “Viv, would you mind putting together a plate of food for me? I'm starved.”

He smiles wickedly. “Not at all, I'll be right back.” He gracefully slides off the couch. When he's gone I feel a little better. There's just something about having him witness Colm trying to chat me up that makes me feel ill.

“
You call him Viv? I thought his name was Nicholas?” Colm asks in confusion.

“
It's a pet name,” I answer quietly, watching as Nicholas piles food onto a plate for me. His shoulders look
really
nice in that shirt. In fact, the whole outfit renders him something of a work of art. I'm so distracted by him that I realise I've completely blanked out on whatever Colm had been saying to me.

“
So, what do you think?” he says, as I turn to look at him.

“
Sorry, what did you say?” I ask, just as Nicholas returns with the food. This time he sits on the other side of me, in effect turning me into a very uncomfortable human hot dog.

“
I was asking if you'd like to come to a dinner party my company is holding next Saturday?” Colm reminds me.

“
Fred works with me on Saturday nights,” Nicholas interrupts. He holds one of the tiny sandwiches up to my mouth. “Open wide,” he says in a low voice. I take a bite out of instinct before I have the chance to fully comprehend what's happening. He's feeding me? Is this situation for fucking real right now?

“
Oh, yeah,” Colm glances at Nicholas in annoyance for a moment, before quickly wiping his expression clean. “Harry mentioned something about your new job. Couldn't you take the night off? I promise you won't regret it.” There go the flirty bloody eyebrows again.

“
She can't I'm afraid. Saturday nights are the busiest. I wouldn't be able to spare her,” Nicholas answers for me. I stare at him in awe, taken aback. He has a pair of balls on him, that's for certain. I have no intention of saying yes to Colm, but I'd almost do it just to put Nicholas in his place.

I finish the sandwich he's holding out to me, and fake bite at his fingers as a warning for him to back off. Unfortunately, this only seems to excite him. His eyes brighten with mischief.

At exactly this moment Dorotea and her friend come over to join us. Dorotea perches herself on the arm of the couch, leaning in really close to Nicholas. Her friend stands before us with a glass of red wine in her hand. Colm eventually takes the hint and scooches over for her. Now it's an even tighter squeeze. Nicholas surreptitiously pinches me on the thigh and I return the favour by elbowing him in the ribs in warning.

“
Freda that's a beautiful dress,” Dorotea chirps with a small hiccup. Somebody's had a few.

“
Thanks, the same goes for your suit,” I reply politely.

She's wearing an all white lady suit with big shoulder pads, like the one Madonna wore in that video she did with Britney Spears a couple years ago. She looks like she should be holding a high powered business lunch in the eighties. That or attending a
Saturday Night Fever
themed disco. She's still hot though, despite the fashion faux pas. “You didn't happen to bring your furry friend along with you tonight?” I ask.

She leans even closer into Nicholas and slurs, “Is she propositioning me, do you think?”

Jesus
Christ
.

“
She's talking about your ferret Ollo,” he explains to her slow drunken brain.

She slaps a hand on her thigh and bursts out laughing. “Oh Ollo! My mistake, I thought you were making a double
entendre
Fred. No, I left him at home.”

I hold in the reply that's on the tip of my tongue. I want to tell her that I've been given a first hand account of how
not
-furry her little friend is. But I keep that one to myself. Is it wrong to internally snicker at your own unvoiced joke?

“
Aw that's a shame,” I say to her, as I happily note that Colm has turned his attention to the mullet lady on the other side of him. He brings a new meaning to the term
any hole will do
.

“
Nicholas,” Dorotea purrs, “would you help me in the bathroom for a moment? I spilled some wine on my sleeve and if I don't rinse it out it's going to stain.”

“
I'm sure you can handle it yourself,” he answers her dismissively, before standing up to go and refill his whiskey glass. I take the plate of food from him and begin picking at some chicken wings.

Dorotea huffily makes her own way to the bathroom. There's a knock at the door and Phil rushes to answer it, letting even more people in. It's a good thing I went a little overboard with the food. I didn't expect there to be this many guests.

Nicholas gets swept up talking to the new people who have arrived. I slide further away from Colm and the mullet lady to sink into the corner of the couch. It's awfully anti-social of me, but I always seem to find myself doing this at parties at one point or another. I'll slink off into the background and stuff my face with whatever food is on offer, just watching the others interact around me.

I give myself a little imaginary pat on the back for how well I did with the catering. I always tend to veer more towards comfort food as opposed to
haute cuisine
. Perhaps when I'm older I'll have enough money to open up my own little rustic café in a village in the country. People will flock from far and wide to taste my cupcakes and my home made stews, I muse.

Dorotea has returned from the bathroom and is insinuating herself into a conversation Nicholas is having with a group of men I don't know. They must be more workers from the club. She slips her fingers through Nicholas' and rests her head on his shoulder. Judging from his posture, he seems a little uncomfortable with her touching on him, but he's not pulling away. Perhaps this is just for the sake of good manners.

I force myself not to watch them any longer and instead focus my attention on Nora and the tall guy she's still chatting to. I'm hoping he's straight, because Nora hasn't seen much action with men for a while and she deserves to be swept away by some hunk. It's like watching a movie. I work my way through three chicken wings, two jalapeño poppers, several pieces of bacon and two more glasses of wine, while I observe her flip her hair, touch him flirtatiously on the shoulder, subtly pout her lips etc.

I give her an encouraging wink when I manage to catch her eye. She blushes at being caught pulling out all the stops. Harry and Sean fiddle around with the karaoke machine and before I know it Harry's belting out “I Will Survive” at the top of his lungs. Like me, he hasn't got a note in his head. The guests gather round and cheer him on. I decide this is my cue for a toilet break. I slip inside the bathroom and do my business.